As a child growing up near the shore of Lake Erie in Canada, I used to marvel at the rich, black soil found a mile or two inland from the water.  On hot summer days my father would drive our 1976 Chrysler Imperial along the shoreline, windows wide open, and the saturating smell of sweet onions growing in the fields would permeate every breath. These farms produced some of the best green onions in the nation. In the entire world. The reason? That dark, rich, nutrient-filled soil nurtured those plants to their maximum potential. In many aspects, the human mind is exactly like that soil.

Your Mind Is Like A Garden

The nourishing soil of a garden possesses the potential to grow most anything planted in it, good or bad. A garden may be cared for by a responsible, constructive caretaker, or neglected to grow random and unpredictable, but inevitably it will bring forth growth of some kind – this is an irrefutable law nature. If no beneficial seeds are planted in a garden, then a bounty of useless weed seeds will find their way into the ground, and these weed seeds will germinate, grow, and ultimately wind up producing more of their own, choking the life from anything positive attempting to grow.

If you are the gardener of your mind, just as a good gardener continuously monitors their plot of earth, removing harmful weeds that choke the roots of the vegetables and flowers they are attempting to grow, you are responsible for removing the weeds of negativity, fear, non-growth and decline from your mind. Destructive thoughts must be replaced with constructive thoughts, otherwise the destructive thoughts will flourish. When the weeds of destructive thoughts are removed, and the flowers and plants of right thinking are cultivated, nourished and pruned, useful thoughts will grow in abundance, spawning the effects of peace, joy and success in life.

As a person thinks, so shall they become has been a lesson taught with certainty through the ages by some of the most enlightened teachers our world has ever known, including Christ, Mohammed, Buddha, Moses, Krishna and more. It’s a powerful statement embodying much more than utopian-sounding ideal; it’s a blueprint for peace, joy and success, yet remains understood, believed and practiced by significantly relative few.

All things visible in our world today were first created in the realm of thought, without exception.  Before computers, the Internet, electricity, someone first had the idea they could exist in their mind.  The greatest beauty of an idea is perhaps its indestructibility. Ideas can exist forever, whether manifested or not.  Ideas harbor the potential of what we may one day become. Potential means possibility, not positively. So, once a positive idea is seeded it is our responsibility to nurture it to reality. If the idea is not positive, we have a choice to terminate it at its root.  In time, our reality will become a mirror of our thoughts, beliefs, knowledge and attitude. Whether realized or not, this is how our individual realities are created.

We are first defeated in our minds, and victorious there as well.

Most of our lives we are taught to think in terms of lack and limitation, dependence and low risk. We are first taught these values in good faith and unintentionally by the perceived authority figures in our lives….our mothers, fathers, teachers and preachers. As children growing, most are constantly conditioned with phrases like, “You can’t do that,” or “Don’t speak until spoken to,” or my personal favorite, “We can’t afford that…money doesn’t grow on trees!” As a result of this subconscious pre-programming most people naturally seek a level of existence well below their true potential. This is scientifically proven. The good news is that a habit of right thinking, with potential unleashed, can be developed through knowledge, repetition and proven techniques. A few simple techniques I’ve learned through the years to retrain the subconscious mind include:

• Goal Setting: One of the most exciting and rewarding habits we can acquire, setting short and long term goals allows us to develop the attitudes, habits and thinking necessary to move in the direction we want to go. Having goals allows us to see ourselves as we want, as compared to how we are, and helps shape a step-by-step progress toward completion of our goals. Goal setting is a habit that should be worked on, updated, and developed over time.

• Affirmations: Much of what we think and feel is determined by how we talk to ourselves, and using affirmation on a daily basis is one of the simplest, easiest ways to guide our “self-talk” in a positive way. Affirmations are repeated statements which stimulate our mind with an attitude of expectancy. By choosing what thoughts we allow to start our day or dominate our mental space, we effectively choose what we want to manifest in our reality.

• Visualization: Vivid visualization goes hand-in-hand with consistent goal-setting and affirmations. Visualization is the process of holding a thought in our mind until that thought creates a mental picture or image of “being there”. The human brain cannot distinguish between a thought that is imagined (visualized) in vivid detail vs. an actual event that occurs. The human brain is that powerful.

It is a duty of our existence to instill in ourselves a strong sense of belief-in-self daily, and our thoughts manifest this duty. This vein of thinking is an absolute truth, and the sooner we accept it as such, the sooner we begin to attract into our lives the blessings we so desperately desire.  Literally, we become what we think. We must be intentional about creating a habit of positive, growth-inspired thinking. Try it…and revel in the eventual result. You, and the world, will be better for your effort.

Wishing Wellness & Empowerment Your Way,

-Dr. J